Reading comprehension is necessary skill for anyone who wants to make sense of academic texts. If you uncritically read a science text, you may accept its arguments which are flawed, biased and subjectively written. Reading critically will help to make sure that your study and research activities carry on as soundly as possible. To read in this way you might use a critical reading checklist to ask precise sort of questions of the material you have to read. The following questions on this checklist are designed as a guide to the process of reading academic texts critically and analytically (1). You can apply these questions to most academic texts.

What is the author’s approach/perspective?
Is there another theoretical or philosophical approach which might have been taken?
Who/what is left out of the text?
Does the author write from an insider’s/outsider’s perspective? How does this effect what is included/excluded from the text?
Do you agree with the points the author is making?

Are the points made by the author supported by evidence?
Is the evidence anecdotal or is the evidence the result of scientific research?
Is the evidence referenced? Is it recent?
Does the writer present opinion as fact?
Does the writer use valid reasoning?
Have any assumptions made by writer been made clear to the reader?

Does the writer oversimplify complex ideas?
Does the writer make unsupported generalizations?
Does the writer make reasonable inferences?
Does the writer represent ideas of others accurately and fairly?
Does the writer distort the ideas of others or present them out of context?

Does the writer use unfair persuasion tactics such as appeals to prejudice or fear?
Does the writer present a balanced picture of the issue?
How would you characterize the writer’s tone? How does the tone affect your response to the text?
Does the writer’s language, tone, or choice of examples reveal any biases? If so, do the writer’s biases reduce his or her credibility?
Do your reactions reveal biases in your own thinking?
Does the text challenge your own values, beliefs, and assumptions?
If the paper contains statistics, graphs, illustrations etc, are these adequately introduced and discussed and do they contribute to the author's argument?

The specific questions below are some that are especially relevant to research articles (2).

Are the limitations of the procedures clear?
Is the methodology of the research article valid? (e.g. size of the sample, method of sampling used)
Are the results consistent with the objectives?
Are the results verifiable?
Are the claims the author makes about his or her own research internally consistent, that is, are the aims, method, results and conclusion of the research logically consistent with one another (i.e. what is argued on the basis of the research is supported by the results; the methodology allows the aims of the research to be achieved)?
Are the diagrams clear to the reader?

(1) The questions on this checklist are adapted from L.G. Kirszner & S.R. Mandell, The Holt Handbook (Sydney: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1992), pp.100-117.

(2) These critical questions are adapted from: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, Vol. 18, (1992), p.1-2.